


So When You're Near Me, Darling Can't You Hear Me (S.O.S)

by Pinkist



Series: Honey, Honey (How You Thrill Me) [4]
Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Gen, No beta only suffering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 16:00:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20473703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pinkist/pseuds/Pinkist
Summary: When you can't afford rent, the smartest thing to do is to summon a demon. Obviously.





	So When You're Near Me, Darling Can't You Hear Me (S.O.S)

**Author's Note:**

> Unedited oop

When Yerim comes home to a completely dark apartment, her first thought is that there’s been a murder. It’s silly, she knows, when the lack of lights could easily be attributed to a blackout of sorts, it still scares her to walk in, especially considering the silence. 

Her roommate, Chaewon is always one to encourage noise, enough so that volume complaints from their neighbours were a common occurrence, so the silence and the darkness lead yerim to one conclusion; Chaewon has just been murdered.

She twists her key into the lock on the door, careful to be as quiet as she can, and when she’s not shot upon entry, her hand creeps toward the lights that sit beside the front door.

“Don’t!”

Yerim screams as she’s tackled backward, her hands pushed as far from the switch as possible. Her eyes widen in panic, only for her to realise that she’s screaming right at Chaewon, who is still in fact, alive.

Chaewon is drowning under jumpers, and still shivering. Her eyes are alert, but Yerim can easily see the exhaustion in them. “Don’t turn on the lights.”

“Um. Why?”

“Did some math, and uh, we won’t be able to afford rent next month if we aren’t stingy with water and electricity. And also food, I guess.”

Yerim makes her way to their faded, felt couch, stumbling over shoes and knick-knacks, swearing under her breath with each near-fall. It’s hard to see when the place is only barely illuminated by five candles in odd places. 

Ignoring the way the springs dig into her back, she sinks tiredly into the seat. “We need more candles.”

“Can’t buy candles, they’re expensive.”

“We need more money,” Yerim laments, legs shaking in frustration.

Chaewon settles beside her, passing her a blanket as she did. “Or lower rent,” she says.

Yerim leans forward, interested. “We need lower rent,” she parrots, voice firm. “Okay, okay uh, we could bribe the landlord?”

“We don’t have money,” Chaewon says, vetoing the idea.

“We could bribe him with cookies?”

“Vegan Celiac, picky eater.”

Yerim gives Chaewon a questioning look, that’s waved off quickly by the older girl. “Yeah, I’ve already tried to bribe the landlord.”

Yerim groans, lifting the blanket to her chin. “Um, we could threaten the landlord.” There’s a pause, and Yerim hurries to tack on, “that was a joke, Chae, we’re not threatening the landlord.”

“Yeah,” Chaewon agrees, “because we’re going to kill him.”

“No!”

“Spoilsport,” Chaewon mutters. She looks like a child, with her arms folded, and her lower lip jutting out. Her whole body is shaking from the cold, and Yerim can’t even imagine her speaking up against particularly bitchy customers, let alone killing a man. Then again, Chaewon has always had a bit of an untapped wild-side. 

Yerim leans her head on Chaewon’s shoulder. “I feel like _ not _ wanting to go to jail is a pretty fair goal.”

“We could summon a demon?”

Yerim doesn’t believe all that Supernatural hoodoo, but she’s always kept a respectable distance, just in case. Her faith that any dumb demon-conjuring plan that Chaewon conjures won’t succeed is the only reason she agrees readily. “How do we summon a demon?”

Chaewon looks positively delighted, as she runs to her room, returning with a stack of books. “Okay so, I was thinking about it while you were at work, and I ran down to the library and got started on the research.”

Yerim bites her lip, suddenly anxious. Looks like Chaewon was serious about the whole thing.

“Anyway, so I found a summoning circle for a minor demon. It says here that it promises wealth and also good luck.” Chaewon pushes the book to her face, as if Yerim can actually read in the dim lighting. She’s not one to shatter dreams, so she takes Chaewon’s word for it, and simply nods her head in agreement.

“Does it say we need anything?”

Chaewon scans through the page, and Yerim wonders how good her vision must be to be able to read anything in such bad lighting.

“Standard pentagram… Five candles, preferably white.”

They look around at the four white candles, and shake their heads simultaneously. It’s cold outside, the store is more than fifteen minutes away by walk, and frankly candles are expensive.

“It’ll probably work with four candles,” Chaewon says. Yerim doesn’t think it’ll work at all, so she shrugs her shoulders noncommittally. 

It takes them an embarrassingly long time, and more than one reference picture to set up a salt pentagram, with a candle at each point, bar one. When they’re done, Chaewon grabs her hand, and begins chanting under her breath. Yerim isn’t exactly sure how these things work, or what to do, so she settles for mouthing words.

She expects it’ll take just over five minutes for Chaewon to give up, but they’re barely a minute in when the candles go out, and their room begins to shake.

Yerim tightens her hold on Chaewon’s hand, out of both fear and concern for her safety, wondering why she ever agree with her roommate in the first place. 

“What?”

The voice is new, young-sounding and awfully demanding. Like magic, the candles flicker on, and in the center of the pentagram, DS in hand, is a black-haired girl with red eyes, who Yerim can only assume is the demon Chaewon was trying to summon. 

She doesn’t look particularly demonic, sitting cross-legged, clearly caring very little about them. Yerim knows better than to doubt her though, at this point anything could happen.

Yerim isn’t sure if she should reply, but Chaewon has no such qualms and launches straight into begging. “Demon-lady--”

“Hyejoo!” The demon interrupts, clearly agitated.

“Hyejoo,” Chaewon amends, “our rent is too high and we’re broke, we need your help!”

“Sorry, you don’t have enough candles for that request. Get another candle or send me back to hell.”

Yerim should know better than to make pleas with actual creatures from hell, but they’re sort of desperate, and she already works for ten hours on minimum wage, she can’t imagine how much worse selling her soul to some devil will be. “We’ll give you something in return.”

The demon looks up from her device to say something. Seeing her summoners for the first time ignites something in her that Yerim doesn’t know, and suddenly the demon is smiling a touch wickedly.

“Anything?”

“Anything reasonable,” Yerim concedes. Chaewon is practically vibrating at the prospect of affordable rent, and Yerim wonders if they’re the first pair of idiots to have summoned a demon to help with living expenses. Surely not?

The demon thinks on it for a moment, but it’s not surprising when she agrees to help them. “I wasn’t lying about not being able to just grant wishes willy-nilly, you really should have bought another candle. I _ can _ get you more money though.”

Chaewon shrieks out of joy.

* * *

Hyejoo sits between them on the couch, left hand massaging her right wrist. “Wow, really I always knew you humans had literally the worst lives, but this…” 

Chaewon knocks Hyejoo’s shoulder with her own, sending the demon tipping over to Yerim. “It’s the pain of fast-food service. Nothing worse on Earth,” Chaewon informs her. 

Hyejoo pouts, laser-focused on making her hand feel better. She pretends not to notice how Yerim has quietly switched channels so that they were watching bad infomercials on Hyejoo’s personal favourite bad infomercial channel, or that Chaewon has draped some of her blanket over Hyejoo’s legs.

“I still can’t believe that your great idea to help us was to get a job,” Yerim comments, earning a glare from Hyejoo.

“Don’t doubt my power,” Hyejoo warns. “Besides, I don’t need to sleep or eat, I can work all day; I’m basically a money machine. I’m saving you both from eviction,” she sniffs, clearly miffed.

Yerim pets her head, running a hand down her soft strands. “You sure are,” she agrees, watching with mystified eyes as Hyejoo’s frown transforms into a smile in less than a second.

Chaewon has grabbed Hyejoo’s wrist, taking over the massaging job to make the demon’s pain disappear. “Have you thought about what you want in return?” She asks expectantly, “it’s been a month.”

Living with Hyejoo for the last month has been an experience. Yerim had expected more hellfire and damning, but instead she woke at 4am on the first day, to find Hyejoo drinking ketchup, and wearing a jacket as a skirt.

Demons, Yerim later learned, were completely uneducated on human lives, and needed the most specific instructions to navigate microwaves, and were absolutely terrified of vacuums

Living with Hyejoo had also been nice.

When Chaewon was sick, Yerim could go to work free of stress, knowing there was someone looking after the blonde. Hyejoo took well to cooking, at least better than herself or Chaewon, and it was nice to come home to something fresh, and not burned. 

Hyejoo was strange, sure, but she meant well, and Yerim couldn’t help but think she was good for them.

Still staring at her hand, now held between Chaewon’s, Hyejoo divulges her wish quietly. “I want to stay,” she says, but it sounds more like a question than a statement.

Yerim’s hands cover Hyejoo’s, still held in Chaewon’s grip. She smiles brightly at the demon, and her roommate, heart warming at the sight of them. “Of course you’re staying,” she says. 

Hyejoo smiles. Chaewon shrieks. Life is nice.

* * *

Bonus:

“Your contraption makes no sense.”

Yerim grit her teeth and attempted to smile. “Just input the seconds you want your food to heat for--”

“But how do I know what setting to use?”

“Just put your food in and don’t think about it.”

“Maybe I should use my hand to experiment.”

“Yes!” Chaewon exclaimed. Little liar. She had told Yerim she had a paper to write and was too busy to explain the microwave to Hyejoo just to avoid the frustration. Yerim already had a strong guess the girl was on tumblr, but her excitement over a potential microwaved hand just about confirmed it.

“No,” Yerim snapped, pointing at the microwave and speaking clearly. “No hands in the microwave, okay Hyejoo?”

Chaewon and Hyejoo scowled at the new rule, but Hyejoo nods in agreement anyway. “I only wanted to test the heat,” she said. “Are you limiting my freedom on purpose? Are you trying to demonstrate your power?!”

Yerim balled her hands into fists, nails digging into her palms. “No. I’m telling you that I don’t want blood inside my microwave, and there _ will _ be blood inside my microwave if you cook your hand.

Hyejoo took her response into consideration. “Hygiene is good, I’ll respect the rule for now.” She moved to sit beside Chaewon, watching the blonde scroll through her feed or something. Under her breath she commented something to Chaewon that Yerim could only just make out.

‘I get how it caught on fire,’ the demon commiserated. It's difficult.’

**Author's Note:**

> anyone have any fun prompts i could try? im not the best writer but i love a good non-angst prompt lol


End file.
